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World Vision under fire for Super Bowl “loser” clothing donations

Ever wonder what happens to all those Super Bowl “champions” shirts and hats that are printed up in advance, but for the losing team? 

Given this, World Vision for the past 15 years has been collecting this loser gear left over from the Super Bowl and distributing it to people in poor countries:

World Vision identifies countries and communities in need overseas who will benefit from the gear. This year’s unused Super Bowl merchandise will make its way to Zambia, Armenia, Nicaragua, and Romania in the months to come. On average, this equates to about 100 pallets annually — $2 million worth of product — or about 100,000 articles of clothing that, instead of being destroyed, will help children and adults in need.

So don’t be surprised if you see lots of folks in southern Africa, eastern Europe or Central America mistakenly believing the Pittsburgh Steelers won.

It may sound like a nice enough thing to do, but a lot of folks think it’s actually harmful and even immoral: donating clothing.

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The host of the Humanosphere community is Tom Paulson, who spent 22 years reporting on science and medicine at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Tom was one of the first daily news reporters to cover the topic of “global health” (a much-debated label which he discusses the merits of on the Humanosphere website).